Hey look! The executive editor of the New York Times, the most liberal “newspaper” in the country is comparing conservative Christian beliefs to belief in space aliens!
Excerpt:
If a candidate for president said he believed that space aliens dwell among us, would that affect your willingness to vote for him? Personally, I might not disqualify him out of hand; one out of three Americans believe we have had Visitors and, hey, who knows? But I would certainly want to ask a few questions. Like, where does he get his information? Does he talk to the aliens? Do they have an economic plan?
Yet when it comes to the religious beliefs of our would-be presidents, we are a little squeamish about probing too aggressively.
[…]Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann are both affiliated with fervid subsets of evangelical Christianity — and Rick Santorum comes out of the most conservative wing of Catholicism — which has raised concerns about their respect for the separation of church and state, not to mention the separation of fact and fiction.
Got that? If you’re a conservative Christian, then Bill Keller thinks that your view should raise concerns about whether you are able to separate fact and fiction – like the people who believe in space aliens.
Well – I am going to help Bill Keller with this problem. In fact, I’ll address the rest of this post to him.
Bill Keller – I know that in New York, you might never have to face questioning by anyone who disagrees with you. I understand that. But you really need to be more careful about hearing both sides of debates before you start talking about the issues in public. I can help you, Bill. I can point you to the debates where you will hear both sides. Many people get their impressions of Christianity from movies like “Jesus Camp”, “Footloose” and “Inherit the Wind”, and we don’t want you to be one of those people.
Below are some actual academic debates featuring an actual Christian scholar debating on topics like whether God exists, whether Jesus rose from the dead, and whether atheism is an adequate foundation for morality. You can watch those to find out what Christians really believe and why.
Formal academic debates for New York Times executive editors
William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens on the existence of God:
William Lane Craig vs Bart Ehrman on the resurrection of Jesus:
William Lane Craig vs Sam Harris on morality:
And here are a couple of extra ones on social issues: (yes, we’ve thought about those issues, too)
You recognize those prominent atheists, don’t you Bill? Hitchens, Harris, Ehrman? That’s right – those are the people you’ve read about in Time magazine and in Newsweek! But you don’t know who Willliam Lane Craig is, do you? Well you won’t read about him in popular magazines, Bill. Yes, he’s a scholar. You have to read about him in academic presses, like Oxford University Press, where he is published. Yes, Bill – evangelical Christians even publish on social issues in prestigious academic presses, like Cambridge University Press, too. No, I know you don’t read academic books right now. We’ll get there, Bill. Baby steps. Baby steps.
Well, now. Wouldn’t you like to watch those debates and learn how the ideas of prominent atheists ideas hold up under questioning? You wouldn’t? Oh, that’s just being intolerant and close-minded, Bill. Just watch them anyway. No, your side doesn’t win. No, the outcomes are not even close. But that’s good Bill – that’s how people form accurate views – by listening to both sides, not just one side. That’s how you gain knowledge, Bill. It’s good for you to know what you are talking about, instead of just forming your entire worldview based on mockery and prejudice, and isolated from all logical analysis and empirical validation.
And when you’re done with the debates, we’ll find you some nice books on these topics featuring evangelical Christians from top academic presses, like Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and so on. Just let me know when you’re ready, Bill.
A new study released by the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, from main author Debra Stulberg, surveys 1,144 ob-gyns (1,800 were initially approached) to see how many provide abortion services. Though legal, abortion is much harder to come by than one might expect: while 97% of ob-gyns reported having encountered women seeking an abortion, only 14% said they were willing to perform the service.
And here is the breakdown by religious affiliation:
40.2 percent of Jewish doctors say yes, compared with
1.2 percent of Evangelical Protestants
9 percent of Roman Catholics or Eastern Orthodox
10.1 percent of Non-Evangelical Protestants
20 percent of Hindus
26.5 percent of doctors who said they had no religious affiliation
Naturally evangelical Protestants (like me!) are the best.
I do not recommend the Freakonomics book for learning about economics, and I would recommend John Lott’s book “Freedomnomics” as an antidote to anyone who has read Freakonomics, particularly on the issue of whether abortion reduces or increases crime rates. The authors of Freakonomics are liberal, while John Lott is conservative. You can read a popular article about his refutation of Freakonomics here, or read the research paper here.
But the main thing is that Democrats do not like the idea that you would be allowed to stop them from being happy by having a will of your own. For Democrats, you exist to serve the will of the state – both by paying taxes, and if necessary by killing babies. You are not there to have your own plan and your own family and your own life, as Republicans believe. And they really don’t like you making them feel bad by resisting what they think of as good. They don’t want anyone to say that what they are doing is wrong. They would just like everyone to pay for what they are doing and to help them do it and to help them feel good about doing it after they’ve done it – and they don’t care what you think.
During the last months of the Bush administration, the feds adopted a new rule that could allow health-care workers to refuse to provide birth control on moral grounds. Now the Obama administration is moving to reverse that rule, the Chicago Tribune reports.
Existing federal law allows health-care workers to refuse on moral grounds to provide abortions. The new rule strengthened and extended those protections. While some groups, such as the Christian Medical & Dental Associations, supported the move, many others, including several state attorneys general and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, opposed the rule.
There have been recent reports of women being denied emergency contraception, which is federally approved for use within 72 hours of intercourse, the Trib says.
The Obama administration will start the process of reversing the rule today. Final action won’t be taken until after the public is allowed a 30-day comment period.
The Senate on Thursday night rejected an amendment from a pro-life senator that would have provided conscience protection on abortion for doctors and medical centers. The amendment comes at a time when President Barack Obama is considering overturning further protections.
Sen Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, sponsored an amendment to the Senate budget bill that would protect the right of conscience for health care workers.
His budget amendment was to “protect the freedom of conscience for patients and the right of health care providers to serve patients without violating their moral and religious convictions.”
However, the Senate rejected the conscience amendment on a 56-41 vote with most of the chamber’s Democrats voting against it along with a handful of pro-abortion Republicans.
Three Democrats joined most of the Senate Republicans in voting for the Coburn amendment.
[…]The amendment comes at a time when Obama is considering rescinding the Provider Conscience Clause that further protects the rights of health workers.
President Bush put the provision into place to provide more enforcement for the three federal laws that make it so medical professionals and facilities are not required to do abortions.
After two years of struggling to balance the rights of patients against the beliefs of health-care workers, the Obama administration on Friday finally rescinded most of a federal regulation designed to protect those who refuse to provide care they find objectionable on moral or religious grounds.
Be careful who you vote for. If free enterprise and capitalism strike you as unfair, then pick up a book by Thomas Sowell or Arthur Brooks and read about it until it makes sense to you. Don’t vote to violate your own conscience because you have a mistaken view of which economic system helps the poor most. Similarly with foreign policy. If opposition to war causes you to vote Democrat, then pick up a book by Frank Gaffney or Douglas Feith and learn about how a strong military is needed to prevent war. Don’t vote to violate your own conscience because you have a mistaken view of which foreign policy helps peace most.
American Evangelical theologian William Lane Craig is ready to debate the rationality of faith during his U.K tour this fall, but it appears that some atheist philosophers are running shy of the challenge.
This month president of the British Humanist Association, Polly Toynbee, pulled out of an agreed debate at London’s Westminster Central Hall in October, saying she “hadn’t realized the nature of Mr. Lane Craig’s debating style.”
Lane Craig, who is a professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, Calif., and author of 30 books and hundreds of scholarly articles, is no stranger to the art of debate and has taken on some of the great orators, such as famous atheists Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. Harris once described Craig as “the one Christian apologist who has put the fear of God into many of my fellow atheists”.
Responding to Toynbee’s cancellation, Lane Craig commented: “These folks (atheists) can be very brave when they are alone at the podium and there’s no one there to challenge them. But one of the great things about these debates is that, it allows both sides to be heard on a level playing field, and for the students in the audience to make up their own minds about where they think the truth lies.”
[…]Others have refused to challenge Lane Craig, too, including Richard Dawkins, one of the Four Horseman of the new Atheist movement, which include Hitchens, Harris and Daniel Dennett.
Craig has debated Hitchens, Harris and Dennett, and defeated them all easily.
More:
Dawkins, who has labeled the Roman Catholic Church “evil” and once called the Pope “a leering old villain in a frock,” refused four separate invitations, extended through religious and humanist organizations, to take part in debates with Lane Craig during his fall tour.
The controversy wafted into the British press after fellow atheist and philosophy lecturer, Daniel Came, accused Dawkins of simply being afraid, saying, “The absence of a debate with the foremost apologist for Christian theism is a glaring omission on your CV and is of course apt to be interpreted as cowardice on your part.”
Here’s an example of William Lane Craig debating the famous atheist Christopher Hitchens, arguably the top popular atheist in the world today.
Here’s a review of that debate fromCommon Sense Atheism, a popular atheist web site.
Excerpt:
I just returned from the debate between William Lane Craig and Christopher Hitchens at Biola University. It was a bigger deal than I realized. Over 3,000 people were there, and groups from dozens of countries – including Sri Lanka, apparently – had purchased a live feed.
Of three recent Craig debates, I was most looking forward to his matchup with Morriston, which has yet to be posted online. I was somewhat excited for his debate with Carrier, which was disappointing. I was least excited for this debate with Hitchens, but it was the only one in my area, so I went.
The debate went exactly as I expected. Craig was flawless and unstoppable. Hitchens was rambling and incoherent, with the occasional rhetorical jab. Frankly, Craig spanked Hitchens like a foolish child. Perhaps Hitchens realized how bad things were for him after Craig’s opening speech, as even Hitchens’ rhetorical flourishes were not as confident as usual. Hitchens wasted his cross-examination time with questions like, “If a baby was born in Palestine, would you rather it be a Muslim baby or an atheist baby?” He did not even bother to give his concluding remarks, ceding the time instead to Q&A.
So why isn’t there a British atheist brave enough to face Craig on his UK speaking tour?
Well, what William Lane Craig offers in his debates is a set of deductive arguments that are logically valid, and supported by the latest scientific evidence (which he has published in peer-reviewed scientific journals), and the consensus of academic historians, using standard historical methods. Atheists are ill-equipped to respond to this case, because atheism is not really a rational worldview that is based on evidence. It’s really adopted because people cannot be bothered with the demands of the moral law. They make these faith commitments about there being no evidence, or that religious people have blind faith, or that all religions are the same (especially the ones they haven’t studied), or that religion is unfalsifiable. But the root cause is simply the desire to not have to care about right and wrong.
Consider the famous agnostic Aldous Huxley:
“I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantegous to themselves… For myself, the philosophy of meaningless was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.” — Aldous Huxley in Ends and Means, 1937
What about the atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel?
“In speaking of the fear of religion, I don’t mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper–namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers.
I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”
(”The Last Word” by Thomas Nagel, Oxford University Press: 1997)
The famous philosopher Mortimer Adler rejected religion for most of his life because it “would require a radical change in my way of life, a basic alteration in the direction of my day-to-day choices as well as in the ultimate objectives to be sought or hoped for …. The simple truth of the matter is that I did not wish to live up to being a genuinely religious person.”
As G.K. Chesterton says,”The Christian way has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found to be hard and left untried“. Atheists want to believe that there is no God, so they do. And they carefully avoid studying anything that might threaten what they want to believe – or having to debate people who might challenge what they want to believe. What you will see from atheists instead of a willingness to study science and to debate qualified Christians is things like one-line ads on the sides of buses, lawsuits forbidding people to exercise their right to free speech, and demands that Christians not oppose abortion and slavery – because that cramps their pursuit of pleasure, don’t you know.
Here’s an example of an atheist learning about history from Bart Ehrman, a famous secular historian:
Atheism really isn’t a knowledge tradition. It’s not really something that they think is true – it’s just that they want to be hedonists, and they want you to stop making them feel guilty with your moral superiority and moral judgments and your “unfair” moral prohibitions on bestiality and infanticide. Often, these people believe that the universe is eternal, that there are millions of unobservable universes, and that unobservable aliens can explain the origin of life. Craziness. And yet they are allowed to vote. I’m scared that these people can vote – especially since most of them voted for 1.65 trillion dollar annual deficits, because of “hope and change”. Maybe we should try to reform the education system to help them to get used to arguments, evidence and debates.
WINTERY KNIGHT 